Station,
Sebastopol besides a large number of dismasted vessels serving as floating batteries, &c.
ONE SCREW LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIP.
Bosphorus 120 Nicolaieff".
Messembria...... 54 Sebastopol.
Names. Andromache Calypso Pylades Piolemy Nearchus Theseus ^neas Ariadne Mercury
Station,
Sebastopol
Twenty-five schooners, yachts, and transports; and a flotilla of gunboats manned by Cossacks, of which 30 were for the Sea of Azoff, and 15 for the Danube.
PADDLE-WHEEL STEAMERS.
Names. Vladimir. Gromonosety Bessarabia Crimea Odessa Chersonese Megoutski Maladety. Boety Grosini
Severnaie Svesda Argonaut Colchis Elborouz.
Horse-power.
besides a large number of small iron steamers of from fifty to one hundred horse power, and two or three tugs on the Danube.
HOSPITAL AND CEMETERY AT SCUTARI.
Any discussion of the merits of the grave and sad questions which have been raised in reference to the management of the English Hospitals at Scutari would be foreign to the purpose of this work: whatever may be said as to the defects of the system, both at home and on the spot, which led to the deplorable condition in which they undoubtedly at one time were, there has never been but one opinion of the unwearied exertions and the self-sacrificing devotion of the medical officers, who, placed there in far too scanty a proportion to the sick and wounded under their charge, seemed actually to multiply theemselves in their efforts to discharge their trying duty. In this task they were ably seconded by the active co-operation of Mr. Macdonald, the energetic Commissioner of the Times Fund, and by the extraordinary administrative genius of Miss Nightingale, whose admirable system of nursing may be said to have inaugurated a new era in military hospitals generally. As early as the middle of January, all the most repulsive features of the scenes described by Mr. Osborne and Mr. Stafford had disappeared, and externally at least the position of the sick and wounded at Scutari was one of comfort, order, and decency.
To the former of these gentlemen, than whom no one could be more qualified to speak on this subject, we are indebted for the following description of the two principal hospitals at Scutari, as well as for that of the interior of one of the wards, which accompanies another plate of the series: —
" The Genei-al Hospital.... covers a considerable area of ground, and incloses what I presume has been a sort of pleasure-garden, with a fountain in the centre. It consists of several floors, the construction of which is generally the same — a passage broad enough to admit of room to pass easily at the foot of beds arranged down one side; out of this passage, or corridor as it was called, doors open into large rooms or wards. In both these buildings* a poi-tion is set apart as the Sultan's or Imperial quarter, in which the rooms or wards, with the staircases, are of more costly construction that those of the rest of the building. The passages are thickly occupied by the beds containing the wounded or sick soldiers; the wards out of them are generally made over to officers of the staff, for dispensaries or other offices, and a certain number are kept for sick or wounded officers. The passages and rooms are sufficiently lofty; the foiTuer I can hardly
* The General and Barrack Hospitals.
m THE CRIMEA.
suppose were ever meant to be occupied, but simply to act as ways of approach to the latter.
** The Barrack Hospital is about half a mile from the one first described. It is an immense building, of a very similar construction; its form square, inclosing a very large open court or parade-ground. Some weeks before it was as full even as when I left it, there were by measurement two miles and one-third of a mile occupied by beds in this hospital, at an average interval between each of about two feet six inches.
" The corridors are of an immense length: on entering at one of the sides of the building and passing down one of them, you would have to turn one, sometimes two, of its angles before you could find any means of exit. As in the General Hospital, so here, there are wards the whole length of the building, varying in size and construction, but all opening into these passages. These wards, however, are very many of them occupied by sick or wounded soldiers, whilst a certain number are reserved for the staff of the establishment, wounded or sick ofiicers, the chaplains, and last, but not least in importance, the ' sisters' and 'nurses' under Miss Nightingale."
This view shows the Barrack Hospital; in the foreground are the graves and cypresses of the old Turkish cemetery, while a peep of Constantinople is obtained in the distance.